


Romantic Subplot

by rewmariewrites



Series: Samwell's Co-Supernatural Hockey Haus [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: ???? John Johnson, Human Jack Zimmerman, M/M, Siren Eric "Bitty" Bittle, bitty got hot, feel free to hedge your bets on that one guys gals and non binary pals, jack is useless in the face of hot blonde boys, non chronological storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 09:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15554928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rewmariewrites/pseuds/rewmariewrites
Summary: Is it hot outside? It’s 7:30 in the morning in September, but it’s hot outside, right?





	Romantic Subplot

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The One Where Jack's A Goalie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14469411) by [onawingandaswear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onawingandaswear/pseuds/onawingandaswear). 



> This fic takes place before the events of Hold Up! Maybe eventually I'll rearrange the order of everything so it's chronological, but to do that I need to write a bunch more, sooooo\
> 
> If I miss any tags let me know!

      There are three main things he knows about Bitty, Jack thinks, as he turns down the path that leads back to the Haus on the day that Bitty is set to move into the room across the hall from his own.

      1) Bitty is good at hockey. He’s afraid of being checked, sure, but they’re working on that. Bitty is fast and quick and has soft hands, and Jack admires that in a player. He’ll go far in the sport, if he wants to, and if he doesn’t he’ll make an amazing baker. 

      2) Bitty is a siren. This hasn’t actually affected Jack outside of the fact that he now knows this information, and that it was _very_ important to Bitty that he know. Apparently Bitty has only ever lived with sirens ( _Mama and Coach_ , Jack hears Bitty explain in his nervous Georgia drawl) or by himself, so he doesn’t really have great control over his voice or his ‘thrall’, whatever that means. Jack thinks it will be fine, because Bitty doesn’t have much of a cause to be singing on the ice, and as long as no-one is enthralled while hockey is happening, everything else can be dealt with as it happens.

      (Jack smiles when he thinks that, because his therapist would be _very proud_ of him. They have been working very hard on his issues with control, have been since before he came to Samwell, and he is finally starting to have those accepting thoughts _first_ rather than correcting himself into them. He’s going to tell her about it in their session on Thursday, and she will probably smile in the way that means she’s proud of him. He can’t wait.)

      3) Bitty got Johnson’s dibs. This is confusing, because as far as Jack knows, Bitty hadn’t done anything spectacular to _get_ those dibs, and Johnson is a _hard_ man to please. Frogs usually beg and borrow and steal for _months_ to get dibs, and Bitty didn’t do that, for anyone. Johnson’s dibs are probably the best in the house, too: it’s definitely one of the bigger rooms, and it has that big window beside the bed that you can crawl out of, which lets you watch the sunset from the roof. Bitty will love it, Jack knows, but he wonders how _Johnson_ knew.

      That’s not to say that Bitty didn’t do anything for the Haus - he made pies, two a week without fail, with brownies or cookies in between, and a _huge_ breakfast on the weekends. (Jack resisted all temptation, of course, because he is a man with a meal plan and the meal plan is part of his recovery and pie is _not_ on that meal plan. Except, _maybe_ , he didn’t resist the maple pecan pie _quite_ as hard as he resisted everything else. He’s a _Canadian_ damnit, and no true Canadian can resist maple _anything_ , especially when they’ve been in America for the last few years. No one can prove that it was him who took the last four slices, and he will take his secret to the _grave_ .) Bitty had insisted that all the free food was just payment for letting him stress-bake, and everyone believed him without question - Bitty is so earnest that the idea of him having underlying motivations is just… _wrong_. If he was doing something for dibs he would do it for dibs, not pretend he was doing it for something else. Jack knows this, and he appreciates it. It’s nice to have honest people around.

      Besides team meals, the only real interaction between Bitty and Johnson that Jack witnessed was on the ice. Specifically, it was in practice in between plays, and Johnson had skated off to the corner where Bitty was catching his breath with his helmet off after a particularly punishing play. Johnson had his helmet off too, but this hadn’t been a play where he was needed,so he had just been waiting on the bench. Bitty had said something that made Johnson laugh, booming and surprised and delighted - Jack wasn’t _quite_ close enough to hear and it bugs him to this day - before Johnson looked consideringly at Bitty - who had really needed a haircut at the time, all that blonde fringe basically brushing his eyelashes, and the back nearing the length of the playoff mullet that Bitty _swore_ he would never sport - before turning his head and briefly locking eyes with Jack ( _how had he known he was there_?) and sneezing hard three times.

      Upon recovering he had turned to Bitty, with a shit-eating grin on his face, to say the words, “Romantic subplot,” before clapping him on the shoulder and skating slowly over to his crease. Bitty had looked just as confused as Jack felt, but Jack skated away before Bitty could turn around and catch that Jack had been watching.

      Jack had never really considered why he didn’t want Bitty to catch him looking. He's not considering it _now_ , either.

      So, as Jack neared the Haus, he considered these three main things he knew about his new across-the-hall neighbour. Hockey, siren, Johnson’s seal of approval. These were definitely things that Jack could keep in mind to make sure that Bitty was as happy as possible during his stay in the Haus. This was Jack’s duty as Captain: the happiness of his Frogs (who were really not Frogs any more, come to think of it). He would do his _damn_ best to make sure that _no one_ on his team felt anything close to what he felt before his overdose.

      As Jack neared the end of the fence of hedges that marked the end of his neighbour’s yard he dragged his shirt up to wipe at his face, and slowed to a brisk walk. Shirt still scrubbing over his face, he heard someone who could only be Bitty yell, excited, “ _Jack!_ ”

      Dropping his shirt, Jack got an eyeful of Bitty for the first time in four months, and promptly said, “ _Oh, fuck_ ,” before his brain _stopped working_ and he _tripped over his own feet_.

      Jack Zimmerman, professional athlete, hockey extrordinaire, _tripped over his own feet_ and _landed on his ass_ because _Bitty got hot oh my god._

      Thank god Shitty wasn’t there to see it.

      “Oh my Lord, Jack, are you okay?” Bitty said, putting his box on the ground and coming over to kneel near Jack.

      “Uh,” was all Jack could say, because his tongue had stopped working too, because Bitty was wearing _short-shorts_ and all Jack could see was _miles and miles_ of Bitty’s well-defined legs bending over and then walking over towards him on repeat in his head. Jack realizes (in a begrudging sort of way) that it is Haus consensus that _he_ has the best ass on the team, but he really thinks that they would change their mind if they had seen Bitty in _these shorts_.

      Then Bitty is on his level, meeting his eye and frowning worriedly at him ( _don’t look at that adorable wrinkle between his eyes don’t do it_ ), saying, “Are you alright? Have you had anything to eat or drink this morning? It’s not like you to just fall like that after a run.” Bitty has cut his hair but the top is still long, hanging around his eyebrows in a way that Jack knows is probably fashionable, but that doesn’t matter because Jack can stare straight into Bitty’s _big brown eyes_ -

      Is it hot outside? It’s 7:30 in the morning in September, but it’s hot outside, right?

      A little too late, and maybe looking a little dazed, Jack nods, because _no_ he hasn’t eaten yet, because he eats breakfast at 8:15 every morning like clockwork, but he _did_ have his protein shake before he went running so that couldn’t have been why he fell. _Then_ he remembers he fell because Bitty is _hot_ , so he shakes his head because he _cannot_ tell Bitty that, and feeling faint from running on an empty stomach is as good an excuse for falling as any other.

      Bitty purses his lips ( _!!!!!!!!_ , goes Jack’s brain), then stands and holds out a hand. “Well, up you get, then, and I’ll grab you a big ol’ glass of OJ. I just have a couple more boxes to bring in, then I’ll get a nice, big breakfast started. Lots of _protein_ .” And then Bitty is smirking, and looking at Jack a little from under his lashes, and - is Bitty _flirting_?

      Jack might short-circuit a little, all robot jokes intended. He can’t really remember feeling Bitty help to pull him from the ground, but he wishes he could have, because Bitty has really filled out over the summer - all broad shoulders and trim waist and strong legs, but still slim and lithe, still a little like a figure skater - and he looks _good_.

      For hockey. He looks good for hockey, like he’ll be fast. Fast on the ice. He’s in shape for all the hockey they’ll be playing because they are on the Samwell Men’s Co-Supernatural Hockey Team, of which Jack is the Captain.

      “Thanks, bud,” is all Jack manages in return, ducking his head to hide his blush and scrubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bitty grin at him, bright and blinding, before darting ahead of Jack to pick up his box ( _that phenomenal ass_ ) and head into the Haus, talking a mile a minute.

      Jack starts to follow him after a moment, mind finally engaged and whizzing with this new information now that the shock of Bitty’s sex appeal is out of his direct line of sight. He is at the door, just climbing the final step, when realization hits him like a truck and he trips on the top step, almost falling through the open front door. He catches himself on the door jamb and steadies himself before incredulously whispering the words “ _Romantic subplot_!” into the quiet morning air.

      He swears he can hear Johnson laughing, loud and booming, from wherever he is.

 

~

 

      Johnson, faithful intern to Check! Please Ltd. and careful curator of their Facebook page, sneezes three times in quick succession.

      “Do you need a tissue?” Sam, the other intern, asks. She’s a nervous pixie, a bit of a hypochondriac.

      Johnson just shakes his head, grinning, and goes back to his work. He knows, with startling clarity, that the premonition he had about Jack and Bitty has begun to come true.

      He can’t hold back his laugh, loud and booming and startling Sam, and imagines that Jack can hear him all the way back at Samwell.

**Author's Note:**

> This is also inspired by Many A Hello's Gardening AU drawings on Tumblr so go check those out cause they're really cute and that Bitty is what I see in my head when I think of Bitty
> 
> go check out my own tumblr @ and-still-not-a-ginger.tumblr.com where I post fic progress reports under the tag 'progress check'


End file.
